


December 13: falling awake

by dizzy



Series: 2017 (the darkest timeline) daily fic advent [13]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 15:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13010763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Prompt:Roadtrip or travel fic in general. Details are you to you!(uh. sorry.)





	December 13: falling awake

The feeling sneaks down Dan's spine first, quiet and dark and spreading at the base of his neck, creeping up up up to tangle around his temples and press with painful pressure at the back of his eyes, choking his breath and making him ache. 

He's being melodramatic, he thinks with a distant self-awareness. 

There's nothing choking him. He can take in air just fine. 

It's all imaginary. It's all in his head. His dreams and his demons and the clouds raining hurt down onto him and the weight pressing him into the bed, stilling him before he can even think of moving, they all live in that feeling enveloping him right now. 

It's all in his head. That's the problem. 

*

"Dan," he hears Phil quietly say. "Dan, you've got to get up." 

Dan would cry if he had the energy. He'd cry if he could remember where tears are supposed to come from. 

He doesn't want to move. Does it count as moving anyway, if this bus is still going? Does he get a pass, letting the wheels and the engine do the job for him? 

Sure. Why not. 

He rolls away, back to Phil. 

He hears Phil sigh. He feels Phil's hand on the back of his head, raking through curls flattened from sleep. 

For a fleeting moment he feels, and it feels - nice. 

Then it's gone, and so is Phil. 

* 

Dan sleeps. 

He's not sure for how long. He doesn't dream, but he also doesn't rest. There's a screaming nothingness in his mind that won't allow him any peace. 

He wakes from a wisp of something half-awake and half-asleep once, and whatever was lingering in the edges makes him gasp so hard he could almost cry. 

He does almost cry, out at least - for Phil, because that was... something, about the not-a-dream, it was... Phil... 

He opens bleary eyes and see Phil's pillow, a colorful atrocity he regularly makes fun of Phil for bringing with him. 

The sight of it cracks open something inside of him. He reaches out and clenches his fingers around a patch of green and draws it to him, burying his face in it. 

* 

"Dan," Phil says. 

More time has passed. Maybe he really slept this time. The bus isn't moving anymore. 

"Dan, I'm sorry," Phil says. And he does - he does sound sorry. "But you've really got to wake up." 

"How long?" Dan says. His voice is scratchy like he's been crying, but he hasn't been crying. He doesn't think. 

"Twenty minutes," Phil says. "Maybe thirty." 

Dan rolls over and reaches for Phil with one arm blindly grasping. 

"Oh," Phil says, like he's responding to something Dan hasn't said. 

Dan doesn't open his eyes but he listens to the sound of Phil. He hears the sound of Phil's shoes thumping to the floor and he feels the bed dip as much as cheap mattress they sleep on can. 

"C'mere," Phil says, and this time Dan does open his eyes. He crawls into Phil's lap and curls his head into Phil's neck and lets Phil wrap him up in lanky, loving arms. 

A cuddle cures everything, Phil used to try and tell him, aching to help and unsure. 

Nothing cures everything. Therapy and medication don't cure everything, they just keep the worst at bay most of the time. 

A cuddle doesn't cure everything, but sometimes it still feels awfully damn nice. A literal touchstone in the storm of his brain, a way to ground himself. 

He times his breathing to Phil's and finds himself drowsy, but a clean kind of drowsy. Something in the back of his mind is stirring, not Phil's arms having magical properties but some click of a recognition in the back of his mind that he's got to get up and he's got to do things. He's got to meet fans and he's got to smile and he's got to walk out onto that stage and be a person he doesn't feel like he really is right now. 

This isn't his bed, this isn't his bedroom. Reality doesn't go away here; reality is the sound of voices outside this metal box. 

Before they left for tour, he was convinced that days like this would be his undoing. He didn't trust himself. He's not really sure if Phil trust him either, but Phil at least dutifully said that he did, that he knew Dan could do it. 

And he has - to the shock of them both, he has. He's had a day or two like this already, but he crawls just past where the boundary should be and then he... 

Pushes himself up onto his feet. 

Because he has to. Because tour, and people, and responsibility. Because - medication. Because phone calls to his therapist weekly. Because - because Phil. Never only Phil, but also never entirely without Phil. 

* 

They take their thirty minutes. 

Phil holds Dan in his lap until his legs probably go numb and his arms probably ache. 

"Okay," Dan says. His eyelids feel heavy when he blinks them. 

"We have time to get you some food," Phil says. "I asked someone to bring us yogurt and cereal." 

This is where Dan would normally say something sarcastic about them being proper famous people not even getting their own food anymore. 

Instead he just nods slowly and starts to unravel his body. 

He only realizes then that he's been clenching Phil's pillow for the whole time. He does laugh a little, at that, before he tosses it aside. 

"Hey now," Phil says, reaching out and patting the pillowcase smooth. "Don't abuse my child." 

Half a dozen retorts fall fast and then far from Dan's tongue. In the end, he just shakes his head and tries for something resembling a smile. It must work to some degree, because Phil reaches out and runs his fingers through Dan's hair again, just the way Dan likes best. "Need to straighten," Dan mumbles. 

"For all the good that does," Phil says, teasing him for how it always goes to curl by the end of a show. "Come on, up and brush your teeth. Food should be here soon, then we've got to go into the venue." 

Simple requests, simple steps. Nothing made to sound like too much or more than it is. 

Yeah. He can do this. 

* 

Standing on a stage, the lights bright and hot on Dan. He's laughing, pumped full of endorphins and adrenaline, riding a vivid sort of high from it. 

He's the same person he was this morning, the same person he'll be when he crawls into bed tonight and lets all manner of thoughts keep him up later than he should. 

That same feeling he woke up with is there, coiled up tight and out of the way but still an ever present companion. It'll come back - tomorrow, or the next day, or in a month.

But right now he's on this stage in front of these people because with a helping hand and his own determination, he got up and went about his life anyway. And just in this moment - what's in his head doesn't feel so unbeatable.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com)! or [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/alittledizzy)! or don't! your choice! happy holidays!


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